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Hearing Scheduled by bluffcityjk · 2005-11-01 10:02 · Score: 2, Informative · on The RIAA's Halloween Tricks

They already have a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=202
And here is the list of the members of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, in case you're interested. ;-)
http://judiciary.house.gov/committeestructure.aspx ?committee=3

Hearing Scheduled by bluffcityjk · 2005-11-01 10:02 · Score: 2, Informative · on The RIAA's Halloween Tricks

They already have a hearing scheduled for Thursday.
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=202
And here is the list of the members of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, in case you're interested. ;-)
http://judiciary.house.gov/committeestructure.aspx ?committee=3

This has yet to be seen by zoogies · 2005-10-28 14:34 · Score: 1 · on Is The U.S. Becoming Anti-Science?

While I agree that R&D gets not the attention it deserves, that is to be expected - everywhere, isn't it? Education is another matter, but I don't think that the US is going to go away from science without a good fight from within, as a recent presentation to the US Senate shows.

Re:Right it's him by rgoldste · 2005-10-27 13:12 · Score: 1 · on Speaker of the House Starts Blogging

He writes like an elementary school student...Robots might appreciate it but humans probably would not

I disagree. He knows who his (intended) audience is--the or'nary American. As a journalist, I was taught to write at 6th grade level because that's the level that communicates most effectively with the majority of American readers. Maybe the New York Times or Wall Street Journal can write for a more sophisticated audience, but a politician from the 14th district of Illinois has to communicate with quite a different constituency.

Now, is it sad that the average American needs to be communicated to at an elementary school level? Yes.

RFID justification is BS by Dr.+Zowie · 2005-10-26 12:06 · Score: 2, Interesting · on Slashback: OpenDocuments, RFID Passports, Firefox Celebration

I read the text of the passport release earlier, and they claim to have addressed the privacy concerns but really haven't. The biggest problem is that a criminal could very easily grab all of your identity information without your knowledge. They assert that (I'm paraphrasing) "since the chip has no internal power source, it can't broadcast your identity". But that is a canard -- anyone who wants to read out your identity can simply use the same high-gain antenna to beam power your way as to pick up your passport's readout. Of course the protocols will be discovered -- at least by the people you don't want reading your passport.

All the more reason to stick your passport in the microwave with your new shirts from Wal-Mart.

Meanwhile, bop on over to www.house.gov and send a quick note of outrage to your representative!

Re:conclusion - aussie_a voted for John Howard by csirac · 2005-10-26 02:59 · Score: 2, Insightful · on Significant FBI Abuses of the Patriot Act

There are many interesting issues revolving around - if the US government can ignore the "right to bear arms" section of the constitution, then what else do they feel obliged to ignore when convenient.

Besides that, however, you can't use your own atmosphere of fear and extrapolate your reasoning and beliefs onto another culture.

As much as Austrlia is trying its best to absorb the "American Way (tm)", one thing we don't want is a constant feeling of fear.

I can't imagine what it must be like to think that your only ticket to safety is to own a lethal weapon that hopefully you'll be able to use sooner than the "predator" can.

I can't help but think that the "we have to protect ourselves", "it's our right to protect ourselves" thing is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. A kind of positive-feedback system, feeding itself.

But for all the guns, people wouldn't need so many guns.

I did some research for an ethics (engineering ethics, of all things) debate topic at university (not to demonise america - something to do with personal vs professional responsibility). In the same year 2,973 people were killed on 9/11 [1] - Americans felt obliged to "protect themselves" against fellow Americans, lethally, in 11,671 [2] homocides using guns.

America supposedly has the highest rate of gun deaths per capita in the world, and is home to something like 40% of the world's firearms.

Isn't this just a little bit alarming? Are you saying this is the "best way"? The "way it should be"? Is there no room for improvement here?

[1] pp2, http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/kadidal05260 5.pdf
[2] 2,749 (WTO) + 184 (Pentagon) + 40 (Flight 93) - pp552, http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf

Vote 'Em Out by Doc+Ruby · 2005-10-25 09:41 · Score: 1 · on The H-1B Swindle

The H-1B visa laws are produced by Congressmembers. Everyone in the House is up for election in just 1 year: find your Reprepresentative and snail mail them a polite letter telling them they don't represent you when they pass and support laws like the visa program. Find your Senator and do the same, though only the one up for election next year, if any, is going to pay any real attention. These people work for us, when we make them - but not until then.

Re:Identity problem by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-22 15:23 · Score: 2, Interesting · on FDA Approves First Brain Stem Cell Transplant

It's hard to tell with such a brief quote, but it sounds like he's talking about chimera type issues. For example, if you know individual A's brain cells will develop in a defective way, you could try replacing them (at an early stage of development) with brain cells from individual B.

What I don't understand is why, after we've been told how important it is to use undifferentiated stem cells from embryos, these people are doing human trials with stem cells from aborted fetuses. Even if we disregard the source of the cells, and even if we consider that the humans subject have a fatal disease, there are serious ethical issues here.

Doctors have been injecting fetal nerve cells into the brains of patients with Parkinson's disease since the 1980s. It was claimed -- anecdotally -- to provide some improvement. But when blinded experimental trials were finally performed in the late 1990s, it was found that, if anything, the treatment actually makes the patients' condition worse.

Linkage:

"Parkinson's Research is Set Back by Failure of Fetal Cell Implants" (New York Times article)

"No Symptomatic Benefit in Second Fetal Transplant Double-Blind Trial" (description by 'E-MOVE' of a conference report)

Re:I think you nailed it. by thparker · 2005-10-21 17:48 · Score: 2, Insightful · on Why Have PDAs Failed In The iPod Era?

And then my iPod -- it does not try to do much more than it is designed for -- a music player (ok, now also a video player -- but I think the vPod was a bad move).

I've seen a few people say this, and I really don't understand it. Could someone explain? As I see it, the new iPod has increased battery life, it's a bit thinner and has a little larger display. Beyond that, it's the exact same device it's always been and functions the exact same way it always has -- except that it'll play some video now.

I personally think the video iPod is a brilliant strategic move. They've kept the device essentially the same, not upsetting a winning formula. They still made marginal improvements in the core music player in terms of battery life and size. But they've put video capability out there to test the waters and see if the legal video download market turns out like the legal music download market has. If downloading Lost and Desperate Housewives turns out to be a winner, you can bet that other content providers will come running.

So what am I missing? Why is the video iPod a "bad move"? It looks to me like they've managed to pilot a totally new service while continuing to give people the same device they already love.

I realize it would be so much cooler if iTunes 6 had the ability to rip video content and transfer it just like we do with audio, but I just don't think that's possible. Since most DVDs incorporate copy protection, I don't think it would fly under the DMCA. If Rick Boucher's legislation gets passed, we may see something like that. You should probably head over to the EFF Action Center and support it.

Re:Before... by tocs · 2005-10-18 06:09 · Score: 1 · on Hidden Codes in Printers Cracked

do you really think that "they" have a database they could reference to find out what printer serial number goes to what citizen?

"They" might be management at a corporation or higher ranking officers police departments who are trying to find the insider complaining about illegal/unethical activity. These sorts of people would have easy accesses to many of the printers involved. It might also figure into corporate espionage. It might help crackers break into a systems. I think the point is that it is difficult to remain secretive (legally or not) if there is information floating around about the things you are doing that you cannot control. By the way: Here is a list of the Representatives that voted for Real IDs. It passed unanimously in the Senate.

Re:Wow! by Anonymous Coward · 2005-10-15 13:41 · Score: 0 · on Capitalizing on Melting Polar Ice

But human polution may or may not be the cause. The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age. We've only been able to measure acurate temperatures since the 1980's. Google for "Microwave Sounding Units" and check the data or check out this.

Of course you may be absolutely right but the evidence is sketchy. Plus, because C02 is considered the primary contributor to global warming, humans are also competeting with some 50,000/yr naturally occuring forest fires which probably account for most of the CO2 in our atmsophere.

Write your Congressman TODAY! by Derling+Whirvish · 2005-10-14 10:43 · Score: 5, Insightful · on NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Lays Off 300 Engineers

This is serious and incredibly stupid. Do not let this pass without contacting you Congressman and telling tham how incredibly stupid and short-sighted this really is.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Commenting here will accomplish nothing. You MUST write your Congressional representative. Be civil.

Re:Yeah, let's turn it all over to China and Iran! by PipianJ · 2005-10-12 06:27 · Score: 1 · on Internet Power Struggle Reaching Climax

If I may be so bold as to respond, I would have to say that the general unease and uncertain outcome as to who was going to be leading a coalition in the Bundestag (or if it was going to be a presumably more ineffective outcome of a grand coalition) is more than enough reason as to why an Internet coalition can be a bad thing: if people don't agree, then noone's leading. Not to mention the partisan politicking and potentially disastrous compromising potentially necessary in such a coalition.

I would hope that you'd agree that the last thing we need is a compromise between a coalition and WIPO to the effect of "We will let you send out autonomous search engines to search for copyrighted material and bring anyone who has them to court automatically wherever you are, in exchange for giving us money to our budgets."

I will concede on your point about majorities, however. On the other hand, Republican and Democratic majorities in the U.S. Congress are not often much better than the majorities you claim are in the Bundestag. Even today, with what is called the most Republican Congress in some time, in the House, they only have a 53% majority and in the Senate, they have only a 55% majority. Even in 1977, the most biased Congress since the beginning of World War II (Feel free to take a look at the party divisions in the House and Senate if you don't believe me), the Democrats only had a 67% majority in the House and a 61% majority in the Senate.

Heeere's Captain Obvious!!! by Soko · 2005-10-12 02:45 · Score: 1 · on Holding Developers Liable For Bugs

Lookie here. Mr. Schmidt is Microsoft's Securtiy Officer, besides being the ex-cyber security advisor to The White House. 'So?', you ask?

If devs were personally liable for bugs, open source development would be hurt big time (If you volunteer code with bugs you get a financial hit), and closed source companies would have another ax over thier developers heads.

This is all very 'interesting', coming from a closed source executive. No conflict of interst there, nope, no way...

Soko

Re:hard money by Money+for+Nothin' · 2005-10-11 14:44 · Score: 1 · on You Need Not Be Paranoid To Fear RFID

#1) The idea of a gold standard is *NOT* that you would not have a paper money. A gold standard does not mean that we go back to a system of trading, literally, pieces of gold (taken to its logical extreme, we could go back to a system of barter, trading cattle for pigs and turkeys and such).

Paper money and the gold standard have both nothing and everything to do with each other. On one hand, a gold standard would be the underlying metal against which the value of the paper money is determined; on the other hand, paper money only represents a quantity of gold, but is used to trade for other, non-gold goods/services.

Prior to the U.S. coming off the gold standard under FDR in the early 1930s, we had paper money that was tied in value to a certain amount of gold. $1 was worth X ounces of gold -- gold, I might add, which was held by the U.S. Federal government.

Money thus represented a physical quantity of a universally-desired (irrational though it may be) commodity. The quantity of money was tied to the supply of gold at some particular rate.

Today, under our fiat system of currency, money does not represent goods (e.g. gold), but labor -- each dollar bill represents a guarantee by the U.S. government to pay the owner of the dollar bill in a product of some form. But that product must be produced, ultimately, by the fruits of at least a small amount of labor (if nothing else, the process of developing the idea of the product). Money today, thus, represents the labors of Americans. Increase the money supply by printing more money and the value of American labor will be reduced by it (more money supply at a constant level of labor means there's more cash to go around, and thus, inflation); the reverse is also true.

The difference is that under the gold standard, you could literally go to the Federal govn't and demand a quantity of gold in exchange for your money. Under our current fiat standard, you certainly can't go to the government and demand a quantity of labor from other people in exchange, even though that is (ultimately) what it represents...

FDR took away the ability to demand gold in exchange for coins and bills, and he took all Americans' gold too while he was at it, because he was a socialist pinko who believed that doing so would save the U.S. from economic disaster (clearly it didn't). The govn't paid people for this taking, at a rate of $20.67/oz, the official price of gold for 97 years to that point. After taking everybody's gold (and silver), FDR promptly had gold revalued up to $35/oz.

Hell of a way to make money for the govn't -- just take peoples' gold and price it at whatever level is convenient, regardless of real-world market conditions...

I might add that this is part of the folly of a gold standard. Even if we revert back to one, what, exactly, guarantees that the govn't won't come along and take us off the gold standard again? Or define gold to be worth whatever it wants it to be worth? And since the govn't can define the value of money, Constitutionally (see #2), how is that ultimately any different from the Federal Reserve defining the value of money by controlling the supply of fiat money?

The fact of the matter is that the government will take what it wants, when it wants, and the only prevention against this fact is an armed, angry, government-restricting people. Of course, we don't have such a populace anymore; we have an "entitlement population"...

#2) The idea that paper money is somehow "unconstitutional."

See the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 5:

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power...

Clause 5: To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

Congress has the Constitutionally-defined power to control the money supply, period, and the power to determine the value of our money (i.e. to